2 WEEKS to 1st Century

larrynipon said:

Need Advice...Just found out I am riding a century in 2 weeks with my younger brother (accomplished Ironman), and his friend (scares my brother). Crapping out is not an option. I am considered a strong rider in the group, but have never been in the saddle for more than 2.5 hours. What shoud my "crash" 2 week program be to best prepare my body for a "fun" paced ride. I ride with HR and Power, so get as technical as you want...or not. Nutrition advice before and during is also welcome. I don't mind pain :eek:
I am currently in reasonably good condition, but don't think my legs will enjoy 5 hours...what sholud I do? My major concern is cramping.

Larry,
First of all, do not "crash" train for the next couple of weeks; you'll only manage to make yourself tired. However, you do have time to put in a few rides that are a bit longer than you are used to without causing any undue fatigue, which will help both physically and mentally. If you are a "strong rider" over 2.5 hrs of riding, you may be surprised just how far you can push yourself on any given day. Quality is more important than quantity, so if you can hold a "medium" pace for that long (or a mix of hard and easy), then you shouldn't have too much trouble with the century - provided you recognize the need to reduce your average intensity a bit and hydrate and take in carbs very regularly and (likely) to a greater extent than you normally would during your usual training rides (~1g/kg of body weight/hour).

Cool. I love a challenge. Well, I'm sure you'll get lots of advice about nutrition & hydration. But, I want to talk about training between now and the ride and the pacing and stops strategies for the ride. The first thing you should do is negotiate who's in charge of pace and length of stops. How about, "Okay, you guys are in charge of the route and the weather. I'm in charge of pace and stops." First, a couple of questions. What's the century, route and topography? What's your 40K TT MP? What's your normalized power on your 2.5 hr rides? How many days/week do you ride? What's your mix of weekly rides in terms of hours?

Let the other 2 do most of the work for the first 30-40 miles. By then you'll be able to gage how strong you'll be able to finish. Keeping the ego in check early will keep you from blowing up later. Good luck.

larrynipon said:

Need Advice...Just found out I am riding a century in 2 weeks with my younger brother (accomplished Ironman), and his friend (scares my brother). Crapping out is not an option. I am considered a strong rider in the group, but have never been in the saddle for more than 2.5 hours. What shoud my "crash" 2 week program be to best prepare my body for a "fun" paced ride. I ride with HR and Power, so get as technical as you want...or not. Nutrition advice before and during is also welcome. I don't mind pain :eek:
I am currently in reasonably good condition, but don't think my legs will enjoy 5 hours...what sholud I do? My major concern is cramping.

Some good advice here as usual. I'd suggest you do one longer ride this weekend of around 60-65 miles, and then just a couple of short recovery rides during the week.

Trying to keep up with your Ironman brother and his faster buddy might be a mistake. If you have to push the pace into your red zone to hang with them, you'll likely blow up and suffer greatly to finish the 100 miles. As Michael said, you'll want to reduce your pace somewhat from your 2.5 hour rides in order to finish. Even if you're used to riding 50 miles in 2.5 hours, the second 50 at the same pace will be a lot tougher. As you know, backing off from your 50 mile pace just 1-2 mph will make a big difference in power required and HR.

Hopefully, they want to work with you to help you complete your first Century, not just prove they can make you suffer. You might get them to agree to pull you at a comfortable pace for 80-85 miles, then let them take off and race the last 15 to the finish just so they can beat you.

In the absence of any data (e.g., 40K MP), I worked out a hypothetical computation of a 5.5 hour ride of equal "training stress" to your 2.5 hour ride. I made the following gross assumptions (which could be way off): 40K MP = 250w; std training ride at 200w avg pace; century duration 5.5 hrs. With these assumptions, the TSS (raw) of your std training ride is 12,288 = duration * power * (power/40K MP)^3.9. A 5.5 hr ride with the same TSS requires a decrease in average power to ~170w = 85% of avg power for your std ride. Hope this helps.

A belated thanks to all the advice provided. The ride was the Mt. Greylock Century...10,000 feet over 9 climbs, one of which itself was a 9 miler up Mt. Greylock. Good news is I finished the ride. Bad news was I completely seized up at mile 55, and was on and off the bike quite a few times. it ended up being an 8 hour day. I apparently have an absorption problem that causes the severe cramping. I'm working through that, because I am doing the ride again. My goal is under 6.5 hours.

RapDaddyo said:

In the absence of any data (e.g., 40K MP), I worked out a hypothetical computation of a 5.5 hour ride of equal "training stress" to your 2.5 hour ride. I made the following gross assumptions (which could be way off): 40K MP = 250w; std training ride at 200w avg pace; century duration 5.5 hrs. With these assumptions, the TSS (raw) of your std training ride is 12,288 = duration * power * (power/40K MP)^3.9. A 5.5 hr ride with the same TSS requires a decrease in average power to ~170w = 85% of avg power for your std ride. Hope this helps.

larrynipon said:

A belated thanks to all the advice provided. The ride was the Mt. Greylock Century...10,000 feet over 9 climbs, one of which itself was a 9 miler up Mt. Greylock. Good news is I finished the ride. Bad news was I completely seized up at mile 55, and was on and off the bike quite a few times. it ended up being an 8 hour day. I apparently have an absorption problem that causes the severe cramping. I'm working through that, because I am doing the ride again. My goal is under 6.5 hours.

Wow! Great job! You certainly anticipated the cramping problem. You sure don't tackle small challenges. Good for you! That's near my old stompin' ground. I'll bet I knew some of the riders.

larrynipon said:

A belated thanks to all the advice provided. The ride was the Mt. Greylock Century...10,000 feet over 9 climbs, one of which itself was a 9 miler up Mt. Greylock. Good news is I finished the ride. Bad news was I completely seized up at mile 55, and was on and off the bike quite a few times. it ended up being an 8 hour day. I apparently have an absorption problem that causes the severe cramping. I'm working through that, because I am doing the ride again. My goal is under 6.5 hours.

Good results! Now you know better where your limit is and you can plan the next long ride. Experience is almost everything on long rides. My long races were always good when I had thought them through before and sucked when I was too stupid ignoring something vital was it pace or drinking or feeding or tapering or even clothes.